We drove across the Italian border on April 15. Our introduction to Italy was less than expected. We crossed the border from France and immediately hit a major traffic jam. Then the rain began. We decided that this was not the time nor place for a drive along the coast, so we headed for the autostrada and Genoa.

By the time we reached Genoa, the weather and our attitude had improved. We drove down to the coast heading for Portofino, stopping for lunch in Santa Margherita. Since we were parked across the street from the Lido Palace Hotel, we decided to check out their rooms. The hotel is the pink building pictured below.

The hotel was originally 100 rooms which they had recently converted to 40 suites, all with balconies overlooking the harbor. It was too much for us to resist. We checked in. Maybe it was still the jetlag or just the customs of a new country, but we were a bit confused about how they numbered their rooms. To get to room 301, we took the elevator to the 2nd floor, walked down 4 stairs to the door to room #301, stepped down into the living room (beautiful tall French doors led out to a balcony overlooking the harbor), down 3 steps to the bathroom, up 5 steps to the bedroom. Keeping in mind that we got off the elevator on the 2nd floor, how did they figure out that this was room #301? It got even better. We read that there was a safe in the room but we couldn't find it anywhere. We asked at the desk and they told us to look behind the first picture in the bedroom. OK! Sure enough, when we took the picture off, there was a safe in the wall. How James Bond! We were definitely not in Kansas anymore!

The Italian Riviera coastline is so alluring that we couldn't stay in our room. Every stretch of the walk could have been photographed and put on the cover of Travel and Leisure. Picture perfect red and blue boats in small harbors carved into the coastline with sun-bleached pastel colored houses curved around the harbor, all displaying window boxes with tulips and pansies in full bloom. We walked along coast until the sun began to go down. The only lure to return to our room was that we were eager to dive into the bags of red wine, copa, prosciutto, gorgonzola, bread, and olives that we had purchased along our walk. We had a feast watching the sunset in our living room looking out to the sea. Of course that didn't mean that we were going to skip dinner. We walked back into the center of town at 10:30 pm for a dinner of pasta with garlic (for Jane) and pasta in a cream sauce with mushrooms (for Tim). We had begun our eating fest of Italy!

After Santa Margherita, we headed to Lucca and the country house that we had rented for the week with our friends Judy and Lynn.

We were looking forward to having an entire house to settle into and good friends with which to share new experiences. And we were looking forward to the suitcase of clean clothes that Lynn was kind enough to bring to us - the black and brown suitcase on the right is ours, Lynn was actually traveling light.

As recommended in the rental information, we decided to find the house in the daylight. Great advice! The house was outside of Lucca in a small, picturesque village, up a long, winding, dirt road, past olive orchards, at the top of a hill. No signs of course! Parking the car, we walked up the stairs to the house and found ourselves in a beautiful yard in full bloom with roses, pansies, kumquat and a trellis covered with wisteria.

Double doors from the kitchen, living room and dining room opened onto the yard and all of our bedrooms on the second floor had the same view. From our hilltop site we could see as far as the lights of Pisa. We were greeted at the house by our favorite Lucca resident, Milvia. Milvia cooked an incredible welcome dinner for us, helped us with our laundry and kept us laughing as we tried to share our experienced in what we thought was Italian. Here Milvia is checking to see if Tim lived up to his Italian heritage by tasting the chicken Tim cooked in olive oil and herbs from the garden. The chicken was good enough that Milvia took the leftovers home to share with her husband Antonio.

With Judy and Lynn, we set out for a week of ambitious sightseeing. Each morning we took off on a different drive, most days returning well after 8 PM We explored the walled city of Lucca, the museums and plazas of Florence, market day at Sienna, the Etruscan towns of Vinci, San Gimignano and Volterra, the scenic coastline of the Cinque Terre, and the beautiful pottery of Montelupo. We also found the gelatto store in each town; tasted the local wines from each city; bought daily supplies of olives, prosciutto, salami, artichokes and bread for our pre-dinner snack; amused the local merchants as we negotiated purchasing fresh pasta cut to our required size and slipped easily into the morning routine of standing at the local coffee bar downing our espressos with one hand while we held onto our warm pastries with the other.

Here are some of the highlights of our tours:

Florence -
THE David. Only 45 minutes in line to get into the Galleria dell'Accademia - not bad for Florence. The power of David overcomes you as you enter the museum. Imagine, in 1501 Michelangelo was 26 years old. He was given a leftover block of marble that had been ruined by another artist and commissioned to create a statue for the Duomo. He broke away from the Renaissance conventions of ideal beauty and sculpted the David to embody calm and dignity but with hands large enough to slay Goliath. Seeing the finished piece, I can't imagine how it would fit into a cathedral. This one sculpture was so dramatic that Florence showered Michelango with honors and the Duomo built him a house and studio in which to live and work.

These pieces are at the Opera Del Duomo museum - Michelangelo's second Pieta (the face in the back figure is a self portrait, the woman on the left was added by Calcagni after Michelangelo's death); Donatello's Magdalen (as the guidebook said, it goes beyond realism: It is suffering incarnate):


three shots of the Duomo - from across the plaza to a close up above a door;


Below is the mosaic ceiling at the Bapistery of St. John and a picture of one of the original panels of Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise. Ten panels made up the east door of the Bapistery, the panels have been moved to the cathedral museum where this photo was taken. This panel is the story of Adam and Eve. On the bottom left God is creating Adam, in the middle Eve is being lifted by God from Adam's rib; top left the snake is tempting them with the apple and on the far right they are being thrown out of the gates of paradise.


View of the Ponte Vecchio from inside the Galleria degli Uffizi (2.5 hours in line to get into this museum but well worth it when you saw the original paintings by Botticelli, Leonardo, Titian, Correggio, Raphael and Michelangelo):


Statues in the Piazza della Signoria - Giambologna's Rape of the Sabine Women and Hercules and the Centaur:

Sienna -
T he Campo with the 335 foot high tower, the Torre del Mangia (first picture taken from the cathedral museum looking down on the plaza, second picture from the steps leading into the plaza) and one of the many restaurants in the Palazzo Pubblico:





inside the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo;


Inside the Battistero San Giovanni in Sienna:

Vernazza - one of the small towns along the Ligurian coastline that make up the Cinque Terre.

After a wonderful, jam-packed week with Lynn and Judy, we sadly left them in Florence and drove on to our next adventure.

We learned many lessons about traveling in Italy. The biggest one was to carefully research their holidays. We expected Good Friday and Easter to be holidays with many Italians traveling to the same places we were going. What we didn't know was that Easter Monday and the following Tuesday were also Italian holidays. That meant that the hotels were fully booked through Wednesday. And, of course, we didn't have reservations from Saturday evening on. We quickly learned that the Chianti area was sold out. Same for Florence and Tuscany. So we decided to drive to the Umbria area. What good luck. This turned out to be one of our favorite spots.

Perugia is one of the largest and richest of Umbria's cities, built on a series of hills high above the suburban plain. It is a medieval city that remains almost intact, considered to be the best preserved hill town of its size. The nerve center of the city is the Corso Vanucci where, as evening falls, Perugians fill the street for their evening passeggiata, a pre-dinner stroll that may include an aperitif at one of the many bars that line the street. The top picture was taken during the day, the one on the bottom was taken at 5:30 PM Saturday evening!

As I said, we came to Perugia, without hotel reservations, mid-afternoon on Saturday, the day before Easter and in the middle of a 5 day holiday. Walking onto the Corso Vanucci we checked out the 1 room available at the first hotel - ok, but not exciting; checked out the 2 rooms available at the next hotel - ok, but more expensive and less exciting; and looked at the one room available at the 3rd hotel. By the time we had gone back to the first hotel, the room was taken by a family of 5 Germans. Yikes. It was now close to 5pm and we were beginning to get a bit anxious. Time for a quick decision. We went back to the third hotel and took the room. Again, this turned out to be a great choice. We were at the Locanda della Posta, the former palace of Marchese Patrizi which has been entirely restored and converted into a small hotel. The salons still have their original frescoes, including the breakfast room that looked out onto the Corso Vanucci. From our room we could hear the bells of the cathedral and many churches throughout Saturday evening and Easter Sunday. The picture below is of the front door to the hotel, opening directly onto the Corso Vanucci.

.

Perugia was an extremely friendly city. When we asked for dinner recommendations at the newspaper stand, it turned out that one of the customers (the man in jeans) was a chef at a local restaurant. Here they are looking up the phone number so they can call in a reservation for us!

Dinner was great. The restaurant had ten tables. We were seated but not given a menu. The only questions our waiter asked was the most important one - red or white wine? Within minutes the dishes started to arrive. As soon as we finished a plate it was taken away and another one replaced it. Half way through dinner we tried to understand how many more courses were coming, but our Italian failed us so we just loosened our belts and kept eating! First there was a delicious soup that we couldn't identify and our waiter couldn' translate, then a second soup with wonderful beans, next sweetbreads in mushroom sauce, followed by slices of pork roast, we skipped the pasta course out of self preservation but dove into the steak with green salad course, and finally ended the meal with a chocolate tart with cups of strong espresso, Boy were we worried about the bill! Unbelievably, the total bill including wine and tip was only $50.

We were hoping to stay another night at Locanda Della Posta, but Sunday morning they informed us that no one had canceled and we would have to move on. The only trouble was that we didn't have reservations anywhere that night. Did I mention that it was now Easter Sunday and the Italians did not have to be back at work until Wednesday? We got out our guide books and got on the phone. We started off with my first choice hotel, Castello dell'Oscano, that we had actually been trying to get to the night before but couldn't find. With only 27 rooms, the hotel was full except that, unbelievably, someone had not shown for their room at Castello dell'Oscano the night before. Not just any room, but the suite in the castle tower! And not just for one night, but their reservation had been for three nights. That meant that we were able to take over their reservation for Sunday and Monday evening. We packed quickly and drove the 10 kilometers to the castle and this is what we saw:


This was too good to be true. The ancient towers and crenelated walls of the Castello dell'Oscana rise up amid a forest of cedars, sequoias and cypresses. It is a historical castle set on an estate of some 250 hectares. .As we got closer to the castle, we saw the tower that was home for the next two nights:

The tower suite - round of course - had a downstairs bathroom and sitting room, a curved steep set of stairs that took you to top floor where the suite opened to a large round room with a high 4 poster canopy bed (I had to jump to get in!) atop a silk rug. There were two arched windows with wood shutters that made me wish that I hadn't cut my hair (get it?!) - you can see one of the windows from the outside in the top picture. Arched wood carved double doors led onto the roof of the castle where there were chairs and lounges to enjoy the view. The inside of the doors were covered with heavy drapes in a silk material that matched the canopy, bedspread and chairs. As was to be expected, all of the linens, including the pillow cases, had a lion crest embroidered in gold. This was the view from our tower window:

The restaurant at the castle only serves dinner to the hotel guests and they only serve a fixed menu that the chef creates each day and posts at 5 PM Since the tower was so amazing, we had to try the dinner. What a feast. Served on beautiful old china in the wood paneled dining room, Sunday night's menu featured food of the province: cheese soufflé for Tim and fish inside a little sack made of pasta for me since I can't eat cheese, soup made from pureed artichoke that was the best dish we had eaten in Italy, fresh pasta with asparagus, lamb chop topped with ground kid in a puff pastry, and a lemon tart for Tim and fresh fruit for me. Whew! Happily we only had to climb to the top of the tower before we fell into bed.

Secure in our knowledge that we had a place to sleep that night, we took off on Monday to explore the area. We started in Gubbio. Gubbio is a medieval town perched on the slopes of Mount Ingino. It's streets are dramatically steep - great exercise. The streets are so steep that there is a tram that takes you up the slopes of Mount Ingino to the Monastery of St. Ubaldo, high above the town.

Gubbio, and the region, are famous for their wild mushrooms and truffles. The streets are lined with shops selling fresh mushrooms, dried mushrooms, truffles packed in olive oil, truffle paste, truffle dip, truffle oil.... We bought enough to supply our next month's worth of picnics. In the picture below you can see how the stores put the mushrooms outside to tempt you; in the third picture, the truffles are in the middle basket.

When we checked out of our castle, we drove to Assisi. The first sight of Assisi is memorable. The hill on which Assisi sits rises dramatically from the flat plain. The town is dominated at the top of the mount by a medieval castle, on the lower slopes of the hill is the massive basilica of San Francesco.

St. Francis was born here in 1181. Today the Franciscans are the largest of all the Catholic orders. You can recognize the saint's followers by their simple, coarse brown habit bound by belts of knotted rope.We went to the Basilica of San Francesco, the large building at the left in the picture above. St. Francis' coffin is in the crypt below the lower church. Basilica is actually two structures, built one over the other. The lower church is dim and full of candlelight shadows; the upper is bright and airy. Both are magnificently decorated, in particular the upper church with the fresco cycle by Giotto - 28 frescoes each portraying incidents in the life of St.Francis. The best one is of St. Francis Preaching to the Birds.

Driving on from Assisi, we came to the town of Spoleto, situated in a wooded countryside, enclosed by stout medieval walls. After too many churches and museums to count, it was nice to be in a town where the chief pleasure is the city itself - no museums or churches. Just the maze of twisting streets and cobbled stairways dominated by a huge castle built in 1359 and until recently a high security prison. The castle was built to protect the Ponte delle Torri (bridge of towers), built on Roman foundations. As you can see in the picture below, the bridge which stands 262 feet above the gorge was originally built as an aqueduct. OK, we did see one church... from the outside! But we countered that dose of culture with a stop at the famous sandwich cart in the local plaza.

Since the holidays were over and the Italians had returned home, we had no trouble getting a room at the first hotel we stopped in. Our first choice was the Palazzo Dragoni in the historical center of Spoleto next to the Cathedral. This 14th century residenze d'epoca was once the palace of the Dragoni family. We had our pick of their 14 rooms and chose a corner suite on the top floor with windows on two sides looking over the old city. Below is the entrance and lobby of the hotel and the view from our room.

l

That evening we had dinner at a restaurant I was waiting for - Il Tartufo. It is Spoleto's most famous restaurant, known for their use of truffles. They even have one menu that only consists of dishes made with truffles! Thankfully we had walked to the restaurant and it was a long uphill back to the hotel so we worked off a few of the thousands of calories we ate.

Spoleto is a classical music town. It is the home to the Festival of Two Worlds that presents two months of art, music and theatre. While we had missed the formal recitals held over the Easter weekend, we did hear the sounds of an orchestra as we walked through town. Rounding a corner we came upon an orchestra playing in the town plaza. As we were packing our suitcase in the morning we once again were reminded of Spoleto's music fame

.
The sienna colored building you could see from our window turned out to house a school for opera singers. In the morning we heard the most beautiful soprano voice as clear as if we were in the same room.

From Umbria we made our way to the Chianti area. Where Umbria had Italian vacationers, Chianti was filled with Americans and Germans. Arriving without reservations we looked at first choice hotel and decided to keep looking. The second hotel was checked out was fully booked. The third hotel was just right. We ended up at the Hotel Villa Casalecchi in the heart of Chianti Classico. Out hotel was a long drive down a tree lined road, past vineyards and olive orchards. It was an old villa on a huge estate owned by an 89 year old woman who loves cats (10 live on the grounds) before it was turned into a hotel with 19 rooms, tennis court and swimming pool. We couldn't afford to stay in the villa, so our room was on the second floor of the farmhouse. The concierge thought that the room was very simple, but we thought that it was a beautiful room and it had the best view of the vineyards. We realized that we were the poor relatives with the expensive address when we were leaving for dinner and saw the Ferrari parked next to our Peugot.

One of the highlights of being in Chianti was meeting up with California friends who were staying in the area for a month. They made reservations at a small restaurant located under the old aqueduct. Only a local could find it! Dinner was in true Italian style - we sat down to eat at 7 and left at 11:30; there were 4+ for dinner, our friends' dog joined us! We left that evening with more than a great meal. We left with information on which Chianti Classico wine to buy and places to go for lunch and the name of a cobbler that made the best leather coats and shoes. It actually turned out to be one of our most expensive dinners - costing one coat and two pairs of shoes! The next morning we took off for a drive, but stopped when we saw the cobbler - Carlo Fagiani (www.ateliermedia.com/carlofagiani). Wow! From the street the display of shoes was irresistible. When we entered the smell of leather sealed the deal. Look at that wall of handmade shoes!



We came back to the shop after lunch so Tim could be measured for his leather jacket and Jane for her shoes. We picked out type and color of leather for both purchases and agreed to return in 6 days for final fittings.

We returned to Florence for two more days of museums. Rather than fight the crowds and stay in the center of town, we stayed at the Villa Carlotta, a small hotel that had been an old patrician villa located near the Palazzo Pitti and the Boboli Gardens. It was an easy walk into the heart of Florence and located in an unbelievable neighborhood of huge villas. We realized that we were staying in a ritzy neighborhood when, as we walked to dinner that night, we passed a police car stationed next to the home of a local VIP. I almost jumped out of my skin when two large dogs lunged at the fence that I was looking through to get a better glimpse of the chandelier in one of the homes! By far this area is the best place to stay when seeing the museums of Florence.

After two straight days of museums and churches, it was time for a change. On Sunday morning we drove north to Venice, just as we learned that Monday was another holiday for the Italians. Another three day weekend with hotels booked. Fortunately we had made reservations for that evening before we left California at the Danieli Hotel. In 1921 Jane's grandparents spent their honeymoon at the Danieli Hotel. This was one of our best moves. All of Venice was fully booked. Even the parking lots. As Tim inched the car forward in a huge line waiting to get into a parking garage, I ran down the street looking for a pay phone. A quick phone call to the concierge at the Danieli and we learned that they had special arrangements with a company to park and store our car while we were in Venice. Running back to the line of cars that hadn't moved, I jumped in, we did a U-turn, drove up to where a woman was waiting for us in the one place with no lines, handed over our keys, and jumped on a vaporetto (water bus) heading to our hotel. All that before those cars had even gotten near the garage. We knew from this start that we would be treated like VIPS during our stay at the Danieli.


The vaporetto on the Grand Canal brought us directly to the hotel - the pink building in the picture above - what a way to arrive! The lobby lived up to our expectations too. The first picture is the reception desk, then the lobby and finally a close up of one of the many chandeliers - hand blown glass from the island of Murano of course!

Everything about Venice is a bit special. There is a view worthy of a picture every where you look. Here are a few - the Bridge of Sighs, views from the Grand Canal, the Piazza San Marco and mosaics on the Basilica di San Marco:

Venice is not the only beautiful island in this area. We took the vaporetto to Burano. None of the grandeur of Venice, but plenty of color:

From Venice we drove in the most outrageous route to end up in Bellagio. Rather than head west and arrive in Bellagio in a few hours, we went south to Chianti. It wasn't the fault of the copilot, it was the need to return to see Carlos for our fittings! Yes, we drove 3 hours, stopped at the cobblers, had an espresso in the plaza at Greve in Chianti and then drove back north two hours to reach the town of Modena at 10 PM! The next morning we could have been in Bellagio in a few hours but we got sidetracked again. This time it was the lure of Traviglio. Never heard of it? It's the town where they make Bianchi bicycles, the most famous brand of road bikes in all of Italy.

After a few hours of Tim drooling over the bikes but indecisive about a purchase, we were back on the autostrada heading for the lake country. What a gorgeous drive! We finally reached Bellagio, found a hotel and settled in. This was the view from our room:

Bellagio is considered to be one of the most beautiful points on Lake Como. Not only is it an interesting old town, but it is perfectly sited on a promontory overlooking the three arms of the lake. No wonder they built a replica in Las Vegas!

After two relaxing days in Belliago, we tried to head back to the Italian Riveria on our way to France, but Tim decided that the routing was too direct. So, we returned to Bianchi Town! This time we left with that 2 wheel number to the left of Tim - a Corsa pro road bike. Of course we also left with the bike bag for shipping it on the plane, bags for the wheels, spare tube, bike shoes, bike shorts, bike socks, Bianchi water bottle, cable and lock. After repacking the car we were on our way again!

Our month in Italy was memorable. We drove through beautiful countryside that covered the range from Tuscan hilltop villages, Chianti vineyards, Umbrian walled towns, dramatic coastal cliffs, urban cities, azure blue lakes and fields of olive orchards. We stopped at more toll booths than we thought had ever been built. We ate more olio (olive oil) and prosciutto than we thought possible. We spent a delightful time with old friends and met new ones along the way. The contrast from Asia was disorienting for us at first, but we quickly grew accustomed to the cooler weather and the higher prices. We will return.

Return to HOME